Menu

Kewpie Corporation and the University of Tokyo Employ @RISK to Ensure Safety of Eggs

Liquid eggs are used as an ingredient in many foods around the world. The risk of Listeria bacteria in eggs, which can lead to illness or even death, is a serious threat to a crucial food source. Kewpie Corporation, one of Japan’s largest food ingredient manufacturers and a major egg product producer, teamed up with the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences Research Center for Food Safety to develop a growth model of bacteria in liquid eggs in order to increase their understanding of the risks. The researchers used Palisade’s @RISK software to accurately measure the risks, resulting in vital findings for the food safety industry.

From its inception, Kewpie has followed the spirit of “Good products are only made from good ingredients,” and that food safety is something that must always be strived for to the best of their abilities, as explained by Miho Okochi, who is part of Kewpie Corporation’s R&D Center Food Safety Division Microbial Laboratory. “In our laboratory we focus on technology and research of microorganisms necessary in product development, and microorganisms that may contaminate products,” he explained.

Okochi explained how they learned about @RISK: “We heard about the software from a university professor who was researching food safety. It is used in the risk assessment of food microbiology and becoming more widely used in Japan.” @RISK has a number of benefits, he said. It has been adopted in many industries, it uses industry standard Microsoft Excel, and the spreadsheet files can even be opened by computers without @RISK installed. In the food safety industry there are a number of users, and the availability of training in Japanese from Palisade is a great benefit. The @RISK software is also available in Japanese.